Posted: September 16th, 2017

Shadow Success: Salesforce.com

Shadow Success: Salesforce.com
Oracle market cap: $104 billion; revenues: $23 billion.
Salesforce.com market cap: $4.8 billion; revenues: $1 billion
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is legendary not just for his ego but also for his ability to bet on what’s coming next. When networked desktop computers came into use in the early and mid-1980s, Oracle was ready with the software applications to serve them.

As the Internet was emerging, Oracle was the first to create a system that ran off the Web. The upshot: Today, Oracle technology runs the data centers of 98 of the Fortune 100 companies. Therefore, what’s Ellison going after now? The booming market for Web-based customer relationship management (CRM) software with a product called CRM On Demand. However, here’s the twist: Ellison isn’t prescient.

He’s the underdog, attacking his far smaller rival, Salesforce.com. Ellison, never one to mask his competitive instincts, even includes a not-so-subtle attack on the Web site to sell his product, Sales.com. The tagline: “No Force Necessary.” Set aside for a moment the fact that Salesforce.com is run by a brash Oracle alumnus named Marc Benioff, who founded the company 13 years ago. This is more than personal. Ellison saw the numbers and decided they were too impressive to ignore: Salesforce.com’s client list is more than

50,000 strong, and the company posted annual revenue growth of more than 60 percent during the past five years. Compare the Ellison’s management style, practices and idiosyncrasies with Benioff. Create a management style comparison chart. Is this a case where the student (Benioff) is outsmarting the master (Ellison)?
(Its a group project and I want one full page information to present from my side. Please answer questions)